ABSTRACT
The African connection that Malcolm X emphasized and the internationalization that was so crucial to his platform was, in Stokely Carmichael’s conviction, precisely the direction the black struggle should be headed. Malcolm had witnessed, and in fact his ideas had watered the soil of, the sprouting Black Power movement. He had foreseen the deepening crisis and growing disaffection and militancy of the urban youth, and had in fact predicted that 1965 was going to be a critical year that would witness eruption of the simmering conditions. Malcolm did not live to witness the riots in Watts and the “long hot summer” of 1965. Carmichael did. He was very much in the vanguard of the disaffected urban youth rebellion that gripped the nation that summer.1 Malcolm X had no more dedicated and effective protégé than Carmichael. In fact, it would seem that his entire life was a conscious attempt to follow the footprints of Malcolm: to finish what he had started. Malcolm had no greater admirer in the generation of black student activists (SNCC) that he held in such high regard. Malcolm spoke to their frustrations, their burning desires, and seeming impatience with what they perceived as the slow pace of change, and the failure or inability of the mainstream civil rights movement to confront America. Consequently, when Carmichael subsequently veered in the direction of Africa, he would predicate his turn on precisely the same expansive and colored cosmopolitan rationale adduced by Malcolm and earlier generations of activists. Of equal significance is the fact that Carmichael did not just turn to Africa, but to the one African leader Malcolm had revered and identified as the lynchpin of Pan-Africanism, the person whose ideology and policies unambiguously articulated and defended an expansive vision of, and direction for, the global black struggle: Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana. In 1967, Carmichael left the southern front of the Black American freedom struggles and turned to Africa. He wanted to take time out to study, and enrich
his understanding of, the historical forces underpinning revolutions under the tutelage of someone he described as “the most brilliant in the world today,” Osagyefo, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah.2 By this time, however, Nkrumah’s presidency in Ghana had been overthrown by a military putsch and he was now in exile serving as “Co-President” of Guinea, an honor bestowed on him by fellow African revolutionary, Sekou Toure. Although he envisaged a rather brief study tenure of possibly a few years, as it turned out Carmichael’s relocation to Conakry, Guinea, to be with, learn from, and at the same time struggle alongside Nkrumah for the African revolution would consume the rest of his life: thirty years (1968-1998). It should be noted as well that Carmichael’s relationship with Nkrumah was relatively brief, lasting from 1967 to Nkrumah’s death in 1971. This was in itself a very brief period of an equally brief Conakry phase of Nkrumah’s career (1966-1971). Carmichael’s relocation to Guinea sheds further light on a phase of Nkrumah’s life that remains relatively understudied. The Conakry phase was a period that incubated Nkrumah’s blueprint for the future he envisioned for Africa and the entire Black World, one which Carmichael, like so many other Nkrumah admirers, wholeheartedly embraced. Significantly, Carmichael’s visit and stay coincided with what many acknowledged to be perhaps the most intellectually productive phase of Nkrumah’s life, as well as his most accomplished as advocate of African liberation. During this period, Nkrumah published five books and five pamphlets, made numerous broadcasts to Ghana, and was in constant touch with world leaders, foreign diplomats, freedom fighters and representatives of progressive movements.3 Whatever Carmichael learned in those few years emanated from the prodigious writings and speeches of Kwame Nkrumah, as well as those of Sekou Toure. It needs reiterating that since both leaders helped shape Carmichael’s life and thought during these crucial years, this chapter would feature prominently their revolutionary ideas and policies. No existing biography of Stokely Carmichael has analyzed in-depth the dynamics of his ideological and intellectual indebtedness to these two great African leaders. Analyzing Carmichael’s African vision and strategies in isolation from the ideological and intellectual wellspring from which they evolved would create a gaping hole. Nkrumah’s and Toure’s ideas and policies are crucial to fully capturing the ideological underpinnings of Carmichael’s thirty-year sojourn in Africa. The ideological and intellectual influences of Nkrumah and Toure notwithstanding, Carmichael’s attributes as a black liberation activist, and indomitable advocate for, and defender of, the African revolution were grounded in experiences that go back to his West Indian roots. He came to Nkrumah through a struggle that first began as a demand for justice and equality for American blacks, which then morphed into a global struggle for African liberation. Though Carmichael did not begin his revolutionary activism with Africa at its core, he insisted, however, that Africa had always been the cultural artifact of the making of his social consciousness. According to him, “Although I was born in Trinidad, in a real sense it would be inaccurate-actually incomplete would be a better word-to call me Trinidadian. Ultimately our roots are in Africa.”4 Despite
being of West Indian extraction, Carmichael contended that his “experience” of Africa, and the American South, made him aware of just how much the Trinidad of his youth was indeed a replica of those “deceptive Creolized” cultures where “Europe rules but Africa governs.”5 In almost every cultural index-cuisine, speech, music, popular culture, rhythm of daily life, family and community life-according to Carmichael, it was “Africa that governed.” Given such background, it should not surprise anyone, therefore, that, like it had for Malcolm X, Africa should become the corner-stone of Carmichael’s liberation thought. More than the other two subjects of this study, Carmichael manifested the deepest and most uncompromising affirmation of his Africanness. He did not just embrace Africa’s struggles, but also fully immersed himself in the pains and anguish of ordinary Africans. He experienced Africa’s sacrifices and pains from within, and not just from the vantage point of a distant observer and advocate. Carmichael fully embedded himself in Africa, among ordinary Africans, fighting and struggling along as one of them. Carmichael’s love for Africa, and dedication to her cause, derived from a combination of sources and circumstances: his West Indian heritage, as well as his experience of, and frustrations with, the American civil rights movement. It was, in fact, in the civil rights movement that he first cut his teeth as the consummate revolutionary. Transplanted from Trinidad to New York as a child, Carmichael’s formative years in America were shaped by two institutions: Bronx Science-a highly selective and competitive High School which he entered as a freshman in the fall of 19566-and the Stepladder Speakers. His admission to Bronx Science, such a competitive science school, seemed to position him, in the perception of his parents, on a trajectory of the career they had hoped and wished for: medicine. At Bronx Science, Carmichael would come under the influence of the radical and leftist oriented students who embraced European radical left and revolutionary theories. He gained exposure to revolutionary theories about, and solutions to, the problems of inequality, injustice, racism, and the abject economic exploitation and poverty American blacks, and minorities elsewhere were subjected to. He also gained critical knowledge of the radical Marxist analytical approach to understanding, and deconstructing, poverty and inequality, as well as how historical and social forces shaped and impacted society. This experience “heightened” Carmichael’s political interest. He now understood, even in these early years, the need for a thorough grounding in, and systematic study of, socio-historical forces. “Regular theoretical study,” became for him a “constant political duty.”7 Bronx Science therefore launched Carmichael’s early activism. He began to accompany the radical leftist students to debates, rallies, meetings and conferences where he gained even deeper exposure to radical European theorists and revolutionaries: Marx, Lenin, Engels, and Trotsky.8 In the process, Carmichael developed a passion for social justice, and a strong identification with, and empathy for, the challenges and problems of the downtrodden and underprivileged. It was during his freshman year at Bronx Science that Carmichael would encounter the second institution in the making of his social consciousness: the
Stepladder Speakers of 125th Street.9 Unlike the leftist European leaning students of Bronx Science, the Stepladder Speakers were intensely focused on Africa, many of them were former Garveyites who talked about African history and culture, and the liberation struggles in the continent. They emphasized the “need” and “duty” of Africa’s children to the continent. They paid attention to ongoing liberation struggles in Africa, and the efforts of such notable leaders as Nkrumah, Sekou Toure, Jomo Kenyatta and Patrice Lumumba. They discussed the potential of African history “to vindicate us as a people.”10 These speakers profoundly influenced Carmichael. They advanced an empowering vision, and were very optimistic about how the liberation struggles in Africa could help reshape Black America and the entire Black Diaspora world. Carmichael gained crucial knowledge about Africa that was lacking among Black Americans-who, according to him, had been through centuries of mis-education. The Stepladder Speakers opened Carmichael’s eyes to Africa. In fact, they educated him about Africa and exposed him to the careers and accomplishments of other leading historical and nationalist figures including George Padmore, Marcus Garvey and C. L. R. James. It was also about the same time, according to Carmichael, that his father was shipped to Ghana where he witnessed a life-changing spectacle: the opening of independent Parliament in Accra. He returned to the United States with captivating accounts of seeing Nkrumah and his deputies, still dressed in prison uniforms, marched into the opening of Parliament in Accra to assume leadership of an independent Ghana. For Carmichael’s father, that priceless experience was a moment of existential triumph, indelibly etched into his consciousness, one whose magical force he seemed to have successfully passed on to his son.11 Bronx Science and the Stepladder Speakers’ experiences profoundly impacted Carmichael’s growing social and political consciousness, as well as deepened his understanding of, and appreciation for, his ancestral roots. Subsequently, Carmichael would overcome what he characterized as the “contradiction” between the theoretical and leftist emphasis of Bronx Science, who rarely mentioned Africa, and the “African centered” Stepladder Speakers who not only raised and deepened his awareness of Africa, and her challenges and potentials, but also inspired his interests in developments in his motherland. In the meantime, however, Carmichael devoted his evolving social consciousness to the movements and protests around him: the growing American civil rights movement. During his Junior and Senior years at Bronx Science, Carmichael became much more politically involved, and began to attend public events and activities organized by civil rights activists. He began to participate in the early sit-ins protests organized by Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), targeting departmental stores in New York, District of Columbia (DC), Maryland and surrounding districts. He also became actively involved in political activism in Harlem, New York, and was soon attending anti-apartheid rallies. It was in the course of these early demonstrations that Carmichael first came in contact with an organization that would forever change the course of his life: National Action Group (NAG) from Howard University. NAG students were heavily involved in protests in DC area, and Carmichael was mesmerized by the sight of young, articulate and motivated
black students from a historically black institution conscientious and passionate about social change. He would subsequently apply to, and be accepted into, Howard University in the fall of 1960. Carmichael’s activism blossomed at Howard. These were indeed exciting times to be at Howard and in the DC area. As African nations increasingly gained political independence, new embassies were opened in DC, resulting in “a tangible and intoxicating air of Pan-African motion and internationalism.”12 Carmichael also became an active member of Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and its affiliate NAG. One of NAG’s official policies at Howard, which Carmichael fully endorsed and spearheaded, was to work to bring together black students from Africa, the United States and Caribbean, and nurture a strong Pan-African consciousness and relationship. This growing student activism soon steered Carmichael from the professional field of his parents’ dream (Medicine) and in the direction of which they had pushed him since Bronx Science. By his sophomore year at Howard University, Carmichael had come to the conclusion, or more appropriately, the rationalization that he would rather “cure” the social ills of his people, before they made them physically ill. Henceforth, he would devote his energies to fighting poverty, segregation, malnutrition and social deprivation-conditions at the roots of the medical and physical afflictions of the black community.13 He dove deeply into civil rights activism. At Howard, he met southern students who introduced him to the harsh realities of the daily lives of southern blacks. Moved and motivated, Carmichael immersed himself in the freedom struggles in the South. Under the auspices of SNCC, NAG and the mainstream civil rights movement led by Martin Luther King, Jr, Carmichael and other students from Howard and neighboring schools began to organize and protest throughout the South: Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee.14 What Carmichael described as “the movement” at Howard University was centered around the young, articulate, visionary and highly motivated cadres of students who constituted NAG-students driven by a commitment to changing American society, and self-confident in their ability and responsibility to reshape the world as well: Cleveland Sellers, Tom Khan, Paul Dietrich, Courtland Cox, Ed Brown, Bill Mahoney and Ekwueme Thelwell, among many others. They began organizing on and off campus protest activities-lectures, debates and seminars to raise awareness about race relations in America, and the challenges of black life-issues, in their judgment, the administration would not engage with. Carmichael helped initiate and organize the epochal Malcolm-Rustin debate as part of NAG’s “Project Awareness on campus” at Howard University. That debate profoundly inspired and energized the student activists who began organizing grassroots civil rights protests first in the District of Columbia and Maryland areas, and thereafter throughout the deep South, especially Mississippi and Alabama.15 Carmichael described the Malcolm-Rustin debate as the event that “helped to clarify for all of us, all of those issue, and drive a clear line between those of us who really became clear nationalists as opposed to nonnationalists.” The debate marked the point, in Carmichael’s words, “when
nationalism took its root and became dominant inside of the nonviolent action group.”16 He credited Malcolm with providing the youth with “all the intellectual arguments and opened up the way for us to show clearly an intellectual basis for a nationalism and an ability to smash all ideas that were in contradiction to.”17 The student activists at Howard embraced social activism and fully immersed themselves in sit-in campaigns, drawn together by a collective sense of responsibility. Their social and revolutionary heroes were Che Guevara, Ho Chi Minh, Fidel Castro and Malcolm X.18 Along with other students, Carmichael spent months organizing and protesting in the South. He would subsequently become chair of SNCC and, as both leader and activist, was in the frontline of protests that took him to the most rural, conservative and racist backwaters of the deep South, driven by nothing but his fearless determination to organize and mobilize the masses, to educate them about their rights and privileges, as well as motivate them to challenge the racist and oppressive system. In the process, Carmichael suffered numerous arrests, beatings, incarcerations and indignities. Nothing deterred him. He was always at the forefront of protest activism, however dangerous. He never backed away from confrontation, especially when convinced of the justness of the cause.19 For years, Carmichael supported and marched alongside Martin Luther King, Jr, and the southern non-violent approach to civil rights. By 1966, however, Carmichael, along with a growing number of SNCC volunteers, had become disillusioned with the non-violent and integrationist approach and emphasis of the mainstream leadership. The more students marched peacefully in Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee, the more such peaceful protests provoked violent reprisals from the authorities. The result was a resounding call for Black Power among the increasingly frustrated students. This signaled the radicalization of the movement, a development the mainstream leadership found disheartening.20 By 1966, Carmichael had come to the conclusion that the black struggle in the United States needed a national organization that would move it beyond the integrationist focus of the mainstream civil rights movement. He advocated an organization and ideology that spoke directly to the needs of the deepening crisis of the rural black population. He saw SNCC and its gravitation to Black Power as the precise solution. Black Power affirmed the need for blacks to become more politically empowered and develop a strong community power-base where they controlled their institutions and destinies.21 Carmichael portrayed Black Americans as constituting an internal “colony” within the United States, and like colonies elsewhere, deserved to be liberated. He characterized United States’ foreign policy as an octopus with tentacles stretching from Harlem, New York to South America, Vietnam, and the Middle East-resulting in the creation, in these areas, of societies of inequality, racially divided societies in which whites controlled everything.22 According to Carmichael, many white liberals, and some black activists, pursued integration as a solution. Nonetheless, Carmichael was opposed to integration which he depicted as a sinister ploy meant to strengthen white domination and ultimately destroy black communities. In his view, integration would not resolve the problem of black poverty and dependency. It was
never meant to. Integration, according to Carmichael, was aimed at enabling a few blacks who “made it” integrate into white society, thus escaping their roots and community.23 He called on black people to create in their communities the structures that would generate political strength. The desire to nurture and sustain Black Power, the need for blacks to develop their own resources, and assume full control of their destinies, in the context of the late 1960s, pointed toward Africa, where the spectacle of indigenous political leaders running their own nations was a welcome and compelling sight of relief and encouragement to American blacks and blacks everywhere-a testament to the political potential of liberation. Consequently, Carmichael began consciously to link Black Power to Africa.24 By drawing attention to the political importance of Africa, Carmichael, like Malcolm, established the need to broaden the American black struggle beyond integration to liberation. Black Power allowed blacks to reclaim the power and right to redefine themselves, on their own terms. He described the black experience in America as racially configured in which whites exemplified and represented power, and blacks represented powerlessness, a nation where whites controlled and owned everything, and black had nothing. Whites defined and set the moral standards that shaped the institutions and structures of the nation to which all others had to adhere.25 Thus far, Carmichael surmised, blacks had been confined to perpetual dependent status-oppressed “victims of white imperialism and colonial exploitation.”26 He had no confidence in the popularly endorsed integrationist approach of the mainstream civil rights leadership. Integration, he argued, targeted individuals for integration, and not the community for fundamental structural transformation.27 Carmichael advanced Black Power as an ideology and movement in opposition to integration-one that prioritized instead, validation of “the racial and cultural personality of the black community” as well as its cultural integrity.28 It called for a leadership that was responsive not to the white oppressor class, but to the black community. Carmichael’s analysis of history was grounded in a racial discourse in which whites traditionally and historically ruled, dominated and exploited-be it in Africa, Vietnam, United States, South Africa, the Philippines, or Puerto Rico. His social and historical analyses clearly underscored a growing consciousness of the need to situate the Black American struggle on a broader platform. He continuously drew comparisons with Vietnam, South Africa, South America and the Philippines, illuminating a global system of oppression that extended beyond the borders of the United States, impacting lives of poor and underprivileged societies. The only viable solution, therefore, was for these societies to “Hook Up.” American blacks had to link their struggles to those of similarly situated peoples around the world.29 Carmichael echoed Malcolm X’s internationalist aspirations, and, not surprisingly, he soon turned in that direction. In the spring of 1967, Carmichael relinquished his position as SNCC chair, signaling his disillusionment with the integrationist slant of the mainstream movement. In his words, “integration was never a goal.”30 For Carmichael, the end had always been liberation-“ending” black oppression. This move from
integration to liberation would, in fact, turn Carmichael’s thinking and activism in a new direction and open a new phase-the international one-which ultimately would bring him in contact with the ideological mentors and heroes who would forever profoundly change his life: Kwame Nkrumah and Sekou Toure. Carmichael’s activism in the American South, his sacrifices and political leadership, his visibility and uncompromising spirit of resistance, the courage with which he confronted authorities and injustices, his willingness to sacrifice personal freedom, to go to jail repeatedly for his convictions, had all won global recognition and acclaim. It came as no surprise therefore that soon after he stepped down as SNCC chair and declared “liberation” his goal, Carmichael was invited to speak on “Black Power” at a conference on “The Dialectics of Liberation” in London in July 1967.31 He saw this as an opportunity to link up with revolutionary movements and activists from other parts of the world, including Africa and the Caribbean. The conference took place in “Africa House” at the London School of Economics (LSE) described as the center of Pan-African activism in London. The invitation to Carmichael to address a conference on “Liberation” in a “Pan-African” setting in fact reflected global recognition of his status as an emerging liberation activist. It also suggested that Pan-African activists welcomed the shift in Carmichael’s revolutionary consciousness from the domestic American civil rights struggles to a global Pan-African one defined by “liberation” which by the mid-1960s was synonymous with anti-colonialism, anti-neo-colonialism, anti-settler domination, and anti-economic exploitation, etc. It should be recalled that this was the same venue and likely the same audience Malcolm had given a speech back in February of 1965 in which he lauded the Non-Alignment Movement and urged Black Americans and Diaspora Blacks to unify and internationalize their struggles.32 In his address, Carmichael drew a correlation between the United States and Britain on the deepening crises of black poverty and the expanding base of Third World populations and enclaves. He painted a grim picture of a racially divided society of white affluence and black poverty and misery. He proposed Black Power as the ideology that would change the situation within the United States, Britain and globally.33 He insisted that these “internal colonies” of Third World populations that were evolving in the United States and Britain had to be freed. The existing, exploitative capitalist society had to be uprooted because, as he argued, “capitalism by its very nature cannot deal with exploitation.”34 Whether he realized it or not, Carmichael had established a connection between the conditions of blacks in the United States and Britain, and the worldwide struggle against colonialism and imperialism. The strategy he suggested, consistent with the broader anti-imperialist struggles, was to raise the revolutionary consciousness of blacks in these areas to coincide with those in the Third World. Like Malcolm X, Carmichael believed that an international context was the most viable for the success of the Black struggle. Carmichael’s thought about black liberation was consistent with the analysis and schema that anticolonial and antiimperial leaders in Africa were then already implementing: the broadening of the parameters of the struggle beyond the narrow confines of race and national
boundaries. His analysis identified the Third World as the epicenter of liberation struggles, and there was no greater “Third World” theatre of anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist struggles than Africa. And if Africa encapsulated the struggles, then, in the context of the mid-1960s, no two persons more perfectly embodied the spirit of Africa’s resistance to colonialism and neo-colonialism than Kwame Nkrumah and Sekou Toure. Carmichael believed that internationalizing the struggle just as Malcolm had argued would destroy the “minority complex” that continued to plague black consciousness. Again, Carmichael’s references to the deepening crisis of “Third World” and “Internal Colonies” of oppressed and impoverished peoples in the United States and Britain echoed very much the central theme of Malcolm X’s last speech in Detroit, Michigan in February, 1965.35 Immediately after the speech, the British Home secretary expelled Carmichael from the country.36 Unknown to the British, Carmichael had already received an invitation from the Cuban ambassador to visit the country. He headed for Havana. His visit to Cuba coincided with an international conference that had brought representatives of liberation movements and radical organizations from all over the world, including Asia, Latin America and Africa.37 Carmichael addressed the conference as honorary guest. In his speech, Carmichael emphasized the shared experiences and challenges that connected the destinies of the nations and organizations represented, the unifying experiences of Third World peoples, and the need, therefore, to develop a unified struggle defined by what he described as “Third World vision.”38 He again used the opportunity to condemn the integrationist slant of the mainstream civil rights movement in the United States, especially what he characterized as the fragile reform initiatives such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. These reforms, he argued, did not address the fundamental problems confronting blacks, which he deemed “inherent” to the capitalist system and, therefore, could not be alleviated within the system. He described the raging race riots in the United States as indicative of a growing black frustration and determination, an incubating rebellious spirit, which would ultimately destroy what he characterized as a racist and exploitative system. Carmichael called for a global framing of the black struggle in America. His lecture underscored the racial character of the Black American experience, the dialectical relationship between blackness and powerlessness, between whiteness and power. He offered Black Power as the means by which to destroy this entrenched racial structure. Echoing Malcolm X, Carmichael highlighted how the American racial order, built on enslavement and subordination, was solidified by a systematic process of indoctrination designed to infuse in blacks, and successfully so, an inferiority complex-a mechanism whites had utilized successfully wherever they had encountered and subjugated indigenous societies. These societies had been mis-educated, and denied the ability to appreciate their history and culture. Like Malcolm X, Carmichael proposed Black Power as a means of reversing this debilitating consciousness, this “brainwashing.”39 Black Power would, he averred, enable blacks assume the responsibility to define
themselves on their own terms. Though his speech was anti-racist, Carmichael however, offered race as potentially a viable means of constructing an effective counter-hegemonic platform of struggle. As he rationalized, “because our culture has been used as a weapon to oppress us, we must use our color as weapon of liberation, just as other people use their nationality as a weapon of liberation.”40 This declaration notwithstanding, Carmichael equally acknowledged the imperative of destroying racism. Although dominant groups had used race to subjugate others-and blacks could in fact rightfully use race as a means of mobilizingin the end, race too had to be destroyed. He believed that both racism and oppression functioned intrinsically and symbiotically within a capitalist system, and thus simultaneously had to be destroyed. Carmichael emphasized the indispensability of Black Power, which, he suggested, not only addressed the problem of exploitation, but also that of cultural integrity. He portrayed Black Power as a potent means of reversing those notions of cultural inferiority imposed by imperialists wherever they had taken control. Black Power was, in Carmichael’s judgment, an effective strategy that would make black people more appreciative of their traditions, cultures and languages.41 Shortly after his speech, Carmichael departed Cuba. This marked the beginning of a journey that would take him across the world and bring him in contact with revolutionaries, and liberation leaders and forces who represented and fought for those same rights that he thought should be the focus of the Black American struggle. It seemed that when he stepped down from SNCC leadership, Carmichael had decided to move his struggle in a much more international direction. Like Malcolm, he had come to view integration as limiting, and liberation as the much broader, and potentially productive goal that would guarantee greater success. Although Carmichael had a successful visit in Cuba, enthused about the prospects of revolution, and eager to learn from those liberation heroes he so admired, Carmichael headed for Vietnam, for a meeting with Ho Chi Minh.42 It was during a brief stopover in Beijing that he met Madame Shirley Graham Du Bois, widow of William E. B. Du Bois who was also a close friend of Nkrumah’s. She offered to introduce him to Nkrumah.43 Carmichael’s brief visit to, and meeting with, Ho Chi Minh was inspirational. Someone who embodied such indomitable spirit of resistance to colonial domination and exploitation, to injustices and inequality, and who had successfully led anticolonial struggles against the French, and was now engrossed in resisting the United States, was someone whose knowledge and experience Carmichael deemed invaluable. From their brief meeting and discussions, Carmichael gained valuable insights into strategies for successfully executing liberation movements and guerilla warfare.44 Carmichael left Vietnam “humbled” but also inspired, and went to Algeria in North Africa-to a continent still very much, in his words, “locked in struggle,” that is, liberation wars.45 He arrived Algeria in early September 1967. There was a noticeable climate of change pervading Africa, and Algeria seemed a logical place to visit. The Algerians had routed the French colonial powers, demonstrating the ultimate potential of African liberation. Carmichael spent six weeks in
Algeria, during which he was impressed by the pervasive enthusiasm among Algerians. One important lesson he learned in Algeria had to do with an issue he had discussed with Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam: the role of culture in nation building. To strengthen their national consciousness, Algerians paid significant attention to nurturing indigenous traditions and cultures: language, music, poetry, arts, public performances etc. Indigenous culture assumed a critical role in nation building. So, too, was developing a strong national consciousness. Such consciousness derived from knowledge of the deep and complex historical roots of contemporary problems and challenges which, Algerians believed, would lead one away from the narrow and constricting purview of what could be termed, “nation-state” induced “nationalism”—toward greater appreciation for, and engagement with the much broader force of “Nationalism”—the latter not defined by national/ethnic boundaries, but rooted in, and derived from, shared experiences of colonial and anti-colonial struggles across geographical and national boundaries, and unifying peoples of diverse backgrounds.46 The Algerian revolutionary leaders credited the Vietnamese with what Carmichael described as a “gift of consciousness,” a gift the Vietnamese had also apparently bequeathed to captured Black American GIs during the Vietnam War: the realization that they were all part of the same struggle, engaging the same enemy.47 Within this perspective, therefore, Algerians, Vietnamese and Black Americans shared challenges. During the Vietnam War, and the French occupation, the Vietnamese preferred “re-educating,” rather than killing, captured Algerian soldiers fighting for the French, or Black American GIs fighting for the United States. They “re-educated” them about their shared challenges and struggles: colonialism, imperialism, racism-thus revealing the identity of the true enemy.48 As the Algerian veterans of the French occupation of Vietnam repeatedly told Carmichael, “Oh, I owe so much to the Vietnamese. It was there that I first became aware of my duty to fight colonialism. The Vietnamese caused me to see that.”49 The Algerian commanders, having liberated their own country, considered themselves now in a position to help Vietnam, and they looked back with a sense of gratitude to the Vietnamese for this “gift of consciousness” which made them realize the problematic and ambivalent character of narrow “nation-state” nationalism. By being part of the Vietnamese occupation, they had unconsciously embraced a nationalism that was exploitative of, and destructive of, their own interests. The Vietnamese helped them clearly see this contradiction, and, beyond this, to become cognizant of the larger global challenges of colonialism and neo-colonialism that necessitated a higher consciousness of nationalism that illuminated shared experiences and challenges across regions. The broader nationalist consciousness which Carmichael seemed to be developing when he left the movement in the United States dovetailed with developments in Africa: a move from narrow “nationalism” to the wider “Pan-African” nationalism defined by a collective commitment on the part of diverse groups to route colonialism and neo-colonialism. True to her promise, Madame Shirley Du Bois arranged for Carmichael to be invited to Guinea for the Eight Congress of the Parti Democratique de Guine
(PDG) where he would formally be introduced to the two leaders who would become his philosophical and ideological mentors for the rest of his life: Kwame Nkrumah and Sekou Toure. Carmichael claimed to have spent “about six weeks in Algeria” before departing for Conakry, Guinea. This would date his arrival to Guinea to sometime in the second week of October 1967.50 This marked the beginning of what would become Carmichael’s liberation struggle for his motherland-an existential struggle, one that became deeply embedded in his being. Fighting to liberate “Mother Africa” became for Carmichael as existential as breathing the air that kept him alive. It was here in Guinea, which would become home for the rest of his life, that Carmichael would learn and study about the tactics and strategies that supposedly would not only free Africa from the stranglehold of colonial and neo-colonial domination and exploitation, but also, by extension, end the sufferings of blacks globally-including those whose struggles he had once spearheaded in the United States. The two individuals whose ideas formed the core of his liberation thought-who educated him on the strategies of liberation, and who, in consequence, became his ideological Godfathers, Nkrumah and Toure-had been brought together by the circumstances of history. The same circumstances which, in a curious way, redirected their young protégé to Africa. On March 6, 1957, Kwame Nkrumah led the Convention People’s Party (CPP) to victory and independence in Ghana, and became President of West Africa’s first independent nation. Educated in missionary schools, Nkrumah later studied at Lincoln University in the United States before going to London for post-graduate studies, and then returning to lead the anti-colonial struggles in Ghana. During the course of his education in the United States and Britain, Nkrumah gained exposure to European radical leftist theories and ideologies that would become integral to his socio-political philosophy.51 Through his education, Nkrumah acquired strong grounding in Marxist-Leninist and other leftist revolutionary ideologies. He returned home to assume leadership of postindependent Ghana with a bold and radical declaration and agenda-one that, it is still not clear if he intended, ruffled feathers in Westminster and among other colonial powers in Europe: the declaration that Ghana’s independence was “meaningless unless it was linked up with the total liberation of Africa.”52 This Pan-African construction of Ghana’s independence sounded like a clarion call to liberation struggles in other parts of the continent still under colonial rule, a call to rise up and intensify efforts toward freedom. Nkrumah’s vision was for a continent totally rid of all vestiges of colonial rule, united in one vision and government. It would be a direct blow on, and challenge to, the former colonial powers who, though had reluctantly relinquished direct political control, sought to establish neo-colonial relationship of some form that would allow for the continuation of some level of control, albeit clandestinely and through indigenous lackeys. Nkrumah’s declaration seemed to have had an osmotic and domino effect as it galvanized liberation movements and activists elsewhere. More and more African countries fought for, and gained, independence. Nkrumah’s vision inspired and energized the Socialist government of Patrice Lumumba in the
Congo. The specter of a union of revolutionary African states was anathema to Western interests. The fear of possible “Nkrumization” of Africa haunted Western powers, and resources were mobilized to destroy Nkrumah and those of similar ideological persuasions. Lumumba was assassinated in January 1961. Nkrumah was not spared. He was vilified by the former colonial powers, and marked for destruction. His presidency was marred by Western-backed plots and destabilization schemes, which ultimately bore fruit in his ousting by a military coup in March of 1966.53 Sekou Toure, on the other hand, was of humbler background. He claimed to be a direct descendant of the great Almamy Samoury Toure, the nineteenth century Mandinka leader who led a protracted rebellion against the French occupation of his homeland. Unlike Nkrumah, Toure did not pursue higher education in the metropolitan country.54 However, it has been suggested that he, too, was well grounded in European radical Marxist thought, perhaps even more so than Nkrumah. His writings certainly attest to his familiarity with radical revolutionary theories and ideologies. As he once acknowledged, “it would be absurd to deny that I have read a great number of Mao Tse-Tung’s writings, as well as the writings of all the great Marxist philosophers.”55 He began his career as a trade union activist, and, in the process, came to develop greater understanding of, empathy with, as well as appreciation for, the problems and challenges of poverty and inequality in French colonial Guinea. He had risen in rank to become leader of the PDG. In 1958, when Charles De Gaulle offered French West African territories the option of some form of nominal independence within the French Federation, or complete independence, Guinea, led by Sekou Toure, was the only country that opted for full independence, much to the chagrin of De Gaulle. Justifying the choice, Toure had declared “We, for our part, have a first and indispensable need, that of our dignity. Now there is no freedom without dignity. We prefer poverty in freedom to riches in slavery.”56 De Gaulle was enraged. Almost immediately, France literarily dismantled every infrastructure it had built and developed in Guinea: financial institutions, social infrastructures, communication systems, medical facilities, currency etc. France was determined to cripple Guinea, punish her for daring to choose independence, and thus serve as a timely warning to other African states contemplating similar choice.57 It was precisely at this critical moment, when Guinea was being “strangled” by the French, that Nkrumah, then President of Ghana, sent a check for ten million pounds sterling drawn on the foreign reserve of Ghana.58 It was a timely gesture of solidarity that Toure would not soon forget. That was 1958. Eight years later, in 1966, when Nkrumah was toppled by a military coup while en route to Hanoi with a peace plan for ending the Vietnam conflict, Toure, and the Guinean people, reciprocated by inviting him to Guinea. At a mass, rancorous rally in the national stadium in Conakry welcoming Nkrumah, Toure declared, “The Ghanaian traitors have been mistaken in thinking Nkrumah is simply a Ghanaian. . . . He is a universal man.”59 Speaking in French, interrupted by thunderous applause, Toure proclaimed Nkrumah President of Guinea.60 Nkrumah did not immediately realize what had just happened. He did
not understand French. He thought the applause was for Toure welcoming him to Guinea. He was deeply touched later when he learnt of Toure’s declaration. He declined the Presidency, but convinced Toure that he would serve as copresident.61 Though Nkrumah received other offers of political sanctuary, he chose Guinea for a number of reasons. First, based on his conviction that the coup in Ghana would be short-lived and he would soon return, Guinea with its proximity to Ghana (an estimated 300 miles) seemed a more strategic location. Second, and perhaps equally significant, Guinea had become “a stronghold of the African Revolution,” given the bold, anti-colonial and anti-imperialist policies of Toure.62 In fact, back in 1961, Ghana and Guinea had concluded a political union, which later included Mali, under Modibo Keita. This union was meant as the basis on which to build the unification process of the continent.63 Upon Nkrumah’s arrival in Guinea, Toure opened an office for him in Villa Syli using furniture and vehicles forfeited by the closed Ghanaian embassy. At Nkrumah’s request, a radio station was also set up and shortly thereafter he began periodic broadcasts to Ghana through Radio Guinea’s Voice of the Revolution.64 Nkrumah’s belief that he would return to Ghana was fueled by mails and messages of support and solidarity he received from people-Ghanaians and others who claimed to be working and organizing a counter coup that would shortly topple the military. This also included forces within Guinea like Carmichael and his cadres of young revolutionaries who confidently promised and predicted Nkrumah’s restoration.65 Nkrumah remained in Conakry from 1966 till his death in 1971. There he undertook his most productive intellectual work attaining, in the judgment of many, the zenith of his Pan-African statesmanship. The coming of Nkrumah also enhanced the reputation of Guinea as the epicenter of PanAfricanism and African liberation. In 1966, therefore, Guinea, a small West African nation of about 95,000 square miles, and a population of between six to seven million inhabitants, had brought together two formidable giants of African liberation, each having defied a major colonial power. Guinea had become a rallying point for liberation movements in Africa. Just as Nkrumah had done in the early days of Ghanaian independence by extending invitations to freedom fighters from elsewhere and black activists in the United States, and had given them ample space and sanctuary, Toure had done the same. In fact, Guinea in the mid-1960s was an attractive sanctuary for African liberation movements. Many had their offices and bases in the country, most notably, the Partido Africano da Independencia da Guine e Cabo Verde (PAIGC) led by Amilcar Cabral, who was a regular visitor to both Nkrumah and Toure.66 This was the historical circumstance that drew Carmichael to Africa. It was clear to him that once his focus had shifted from integration to liberation, there just was no better place to be than Guinea. It is not clear at which point Carmichael decided on Guinea and Africa. In Beijing he had hinted to Madame Shirley Du Bois of his interest in joining and fighting alongside a liberation movement in Africa. Later in Algeria, just before his departure, he claimed to have corresponded with representatives of several
African liberation movements expressing interest in becoming a freedom fighter. However, he soon realized Guinea had become “the most revolutionary and innovative country in Africa.”67 This was what attracted him to the country. Carmichael’s first meeting with Nkrumah was brief. They discussed the movement in the United States and Black Power. Nkrumah contended that black experiences everywhere were inextricable linked, and underscored the responsibility of those like himself and Carmichael who were conscious of this linkage to impart such awareness to others who lacked it.68 After this meeting, they had several others during which they further discussed the black struggle in the United States, and the need for Pan-African solidarity. They also talked about the coup that toppled Nkrumah in Ghana, and its broader implications for the future of Africa.69 Being in Guinea gave Carmichael insights into the challenges of governing a liberated territory, one that remained embattled, still surrounded by hostile forces. Such was the status of Guinea when Carmichael arrived. This looming threat notwithstanding, Sekou Toure was determined to defend Guinea’s revolution. He deployed Guinea’s indigenous cultural resources to her defense. He consciously sought to use culture to generate a strong sense of nationalism and identification with the nation state.70 Toure mobilized the one resource that he trusted: his peoples’ power. The PDG described the working people as “the class of progress, the true class of the revolution, the one capable of any sacrifice, of any dynamic social transformation.”71 Toure made his people “superior” and encouraged mass participation in government at all levels. This Pan-African and progressive approach only bolstered the determination of subversive elements, domestic and foreign, to destabilize the government. There were plots and invasion attempts with such frequency that some observed that Guinea seemed to experience a condition of “permanent plot.” An editorial in the PDG’s official paper Hoyoya on September 12, 1971 observed that though Guinea had won independence peacefully, “it remains true that the threats and attempts at colonial re-conquest constituted since 1958 a sword of Damocles suspended over the young Guinean nation.”72 This did not deter the country from openly courting and offering sanctuary to liberation movements from other parts of the continent. Sekou Toure preferred the term “Communocracy” instead of “African Socialism” to describe a model in which the state was administered through the active cooperation and participation of the people. As he rationalized,
Africa is essentially “communocratic”; collective life and social solidarity give its habits a humanistic foundation. . . . An African cannot imagine organizing his life outside that of his social group-family, village, clan. The voice of African people is not individualistic.73
